Thousands of Iraqis Flee Fighting South of Mosul

Local Editor

Thousands of desperate civilians were fleeing fighting Sunday on the new front opened by Iraqi forces against Daesh [the Arabic acronym for the Takfiri "ISIS" group] south of the city of Mosul.

Families crammed in the back of pickup trucks, sometimes bringing dead and wounded with them, emerged from the dust after crossing the front line and were met by Kurdish forces.

Iraqi army troops and allied paramilitary fighters Thursday launched a major offensive aimed at retaking the northern Nineveh province, the capital of which, Mosul, is the main hub of Daesh in Iraq.

The forces had been advancing from their base in Makhmur towards the town of Qayyarah, about 60 kilometers [35 miles] south of Mosul.

Growing numbers of civilians had been fleeing the advance to Makhmur where they are being assisted by Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

"So far we have received around 3,000 people and the numbers are growing every day," Ali Khodeir Ahmed, a member of Nineveh's provincial council, told AFP in Makhmur.

"But there are no services offered to them by the Iraqi government, we have to put them up in a stadium in Makhmur," he said.

The Iraqi government described the advance as the first phase of what is expected to be a long and difficult operation to retake Mosul, the country's second city and the largest urban center in Daesh's cross-border "caliphate".

In the desert west of Makhmur, dust storms were whipped up by the line of vehicles fleeing Daesh-held territory, including a pickup carrying four women and 10 children in the back.

The battle had so far focused on four villages west of Makhmur. Qayyarah, an area that includes a former air base and an oil facility, lies to the west, on the other bank of the Tigris River.

Smain Nuweis fled the village of Kharbardan with his family of seven squeezed into the back of his Opel.

"We have seen a lot of suffering," the 28-year-old said. "And it got worse now with the shelling."

"Daesh will not allow the people to flee, they want them to stay," said Nuweis.

The provincial council official urged the government to do more for the flow of displaced people, who were given little more than water upon reaching the Peshmerga.

"We need to open camps and provide urgent assistance. These people's situation is very bad, they were barely able to take any belongings with them," said Ali Khodeir Ahmed.

More than 3.3 million people had been displaced by conflict in Iraq since the start of 2014, according to figures from the United Nations.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team